Maxis update on SimCity improvements and fixes

12 Apr 2013 by Paul Younger

SimCity fixes continue with a list of planned updates from Maxis, some of which have been applied to the test server already.

Updates that are planned include leaderboards back on all servers, city rollback fixes and quite a few casino tweaks which should make that path a little more profitable for players. On the test server right now there are only a couple of these fixes but the bulk of the updates are not quite ready to be deployed by Maxis.

Updates currently on our Public Test Server:

• Join Region Filter: Results will only show regions with available slots.
• Leaderboards: Leaderboards restored.

Updates currently in our Development Test environment:

What’s New

• Mayors Mansion: Mayor will now drive his fancy cars to work. Mayor will take his helicopter, limo, or sports car if the modules are present.
• Data maps: Now show in their normal color when a color filter is enabled (unless in a colorblind mode)
• HUD: Now color-corrects when in a colorblind mode.

Fixes and Updates
• Cities not Processing/rollbacks: Fix to mitigate the chance of future occurrences of cities not processing and rollbacks.
• Leaderboards: Restoring leaderboards to all servers.
• Invitations: Invitations to join a region should be sent and received more quickly.
• Region Filters: Now sorts regions with available cities to the top
• Tourism: Fixes for unexplained fluctuation of tourists. Tourists more smartly counted on transit.
• Casinos: Casinos tuned so that Gambling will be a more profitable specialty. Players can bulldoze and replace existing casinos to see effects of tuning.
• More Casinos: Raised module limit on Sci-Fi and Sleek Casinos to 6 modules.
• Region Play: Cash gifts can now be received in a bankrupt city.
• Education: Fixed school buses getting stuck at the high school. Existing Schools will fix themselves.
• Education: Fixed school buses picking up students at neighboring cities that didn’t have school bus stops.
• Education: Fix to more accurately track regional student population.
• Education: Fix where kids leaving the school bus stop would teleport to the nearest pedestrian path instead of walking directly into the school.
• Education: University wings now give the proper bonus.
• Recycling: Fix for the Recycling Center where it would sometimes stop working, recycling services will visit other cities.
• Air pollution: Fixed issue where air pollution would appear to come from nowhere. Fix issues where your regional air pollution would be reflected back into your box for a double penalty.
• Fire Service: Fire Trucks don’t clump, dispatch to fires more efficiently.
• Water: Water pumps are now capable of pumping water from rivers at a larger radius so they can take better advantage of the water table in a city.
• Disasters: Cooldown for random disasters: Some players were getting hit too frequently with random disasters, this introduces a cooldown where no random disasters will occur.
• Trade: Fix for trade ports that suddenly stop shipping.
• Transit: Street Cars and Buses go to high volume stops first.
• Transit: A city with residents and public transit will now provide the accurate amount of workers and shoppers to its neighbors.
• Transit: A transit vehicle stuck in a pick-up or drop off loop will now go back to a garage instead of trying to pick up more people.
• Transit: Neighbors buses will now come in lower numbers into the city and do a better job at picking up local passengers first.
• Tuning: Residential-only cities have failure state.
• Budgets: Fixed bug with monthly transactions being used to get around systems pushing back.